Questions of King Milinda Part 01

SR No.: 007681
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1890
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 83

THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
I, 35.
waggons in advance, and followed himself after them. And at a place where the road divided, not far from Pâtaliputta, he stopped, and said to Nâgasena: This is the turning to the Asoka Park. Now I have here a rare piece of woollen stuff, sixteen cubits by eight. [18] Do me the favour of accepting it.' And Nâgasena did so. And the merchant, pleased and glad, with joyful heart, and full of content and happiness, saluted the venerable Nâgasena, and keeping him on his right hand as he passed round him, went on his way.
35. But Nâgasena went on to the Asoka Park to Dhamma-rakkhita. And after saluting him, and telling him on what errand he had come, he learnt by heart, from the mouth of the venerable Dhamma-rakkhita, the whole of the three baskets of the Buddha's word in three months, and after a single recital, so far as the letter (that is, knowing the words by heart) was concerned. And in three months more he mastered the spirit (that is, the deeper meaning of the sense of the words).
But at the end of that time the venerable Dham
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1 Pitakas. This expression is not used in the sacred books of the canon itself. When it first came into use is unknown. This is the earliest passage in which it has hitherto been found in the technical sense of a division of the Scriptures. It was in full use at the time of Buddhaghosa (see the Sumangala Vilâsinî, pp. 15, 16, 17, 18, &c., and the Samanta Pâsâdikâ, printed in Oldenberg's 'Vinaya Pitaka,' vol. iii, p. 293). The tertium quid of the comparison is not the basket or the box as a receptacle for preservation, but as a means of handing on (as Eastern navvies removing earth put it into baskets and pass these latter on from hand to hand). So the expression 'three baskets' means not 'the three collections,' but the three bodies of oral tradition as handed down from teacher to teacher.' See Trenckner's decisive argument in his 'Pâli Miscellanies,' pp. 67-69.
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